>Want to start a new D&D game
>Thinking about something like Ravenloft or Dark Sun
>Player creates Dragonborn Fighter
FUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.
>>45056049
Why didn't you just tell him there were no Dragonborn in your campaign? Is it because you're a faggot?
How does this stop something like Ravenloft or Dark Sun?
Couldn't you tell him no?
Couldn't you help find his character a spot in the world?
>>45056078
It's the first time this guy is playing with me, i didn't want to look like an asshole.
>>45056133
Well, I'm not calling you a faggot..I do think you enjoy other men's cocks in your mouth though.
Its your job, to tell players no sometimes anon.
>>45056133
A first-time player might have a better time in Forgotten Realms or Ebberron. Ravenloft is meant to easy be ported from setting to setting though.
>>45056245
That's fine, but can you please share your stories?
>>45056049
Why the fuck would anyone run games where players make characters BEFORE YOU'VE EVEN DECIDED ON THE SETTING?!
Why? How? WHY?
What precludes a dragonborn from Ravenloft?
I suppose it depends on what edition we're talking about, but there's no reason a man with a dragon face would have any easier way out of vampireland.
>>45056387
I don't know, but I've seen this before.
I even had one guy about a year back who got annoyed that I kept asking him for setting info before wanting to build my character. He kept shouting something or other about how it was a sandbox.
>>45056049
>Running a high stakes city state diplomacy/intrigue game.
>Players have gotten themselves into a war.
>They're trying to secure an alliance with the various fey of a forest to the southeast.
>After several rounds of negotiations/quests, they finally meet with the closest thing the fey have to a leader, which is a tiny pixie, some 5 inches tall.
>One of the players chortles about how that's smaller than his penis, and then has his character pull down his trousers so he can try to club her to death with his erection.
>>45056049
Josh, I had five different characters ready to go but you wouldn't decide on a fucking setting.
Stop being so fucking passive aggressive and actually set the tone and setting of the game if you want us to make characters instead of pulling them out of a premade folder.
>>45056049
Kinda the same happened to me, though it was a cleric instead of fighter, in a dark fantasy game. I just rolled with it, and everything has been going smoothly. It even gave me a reason to put dragons into the setting and they turned out pretty good, too.
Why do people freak out as soon as they see something that does not coincide with their vision of "perfection"?
>>45056734
>>One of the players chortles about how that's smaller than his penis, and then has his character pull down his trousers so he can try to club her to death with his erection.
>>45056049
>>Player creates Dragonborn Fighter
What is even the problem?
Why is OP's autism on this board?
>>45057349
Yeah, it's really easy to build a scary atmosphere for a big, scaled, fire breathing character.
>>45057826
Make them explore an abandoned Dragon Slayer's guild full of zombie dragon slayers
>>45057826
Hey OP
>>45057826
>big scaled fire breathing guys can't get scared too
D&D is already shitty at horror anyway.
Once I was DMing a game and the whole session was actually planned really well for once rather than open ended improve shit. They had established what they were going to do last session and I got everything ready.
The players were going to infiltrate the palace of the badguys and sneak into each of their rooms to learn something about them. I had planned out the odds for each room, different events etc. What they can find with different search checks and percentage chances to run into the npcs, run into servants, etc. Lots of options. I made a sheet that the players would each fill out. Who is in each room, and their rolls. All to be done in advance so that the palace would 'generate' easily and I could do the whole session without much interruption for rolling while maintaining the sort of fun "we controlled what happened because we rolled the dice" aspect of random encounters which my players liked.
So the person who had received the plot hook about this and was meant to go tell the party just... decided not to. He said it would be less dangerous with one person and went in alone. So.. he just did the entire thing alone. It was my first time dming and didn't know what to do. Luckily someone who was an experienced dm and knew the game but wasn't playing went and ran a dungeon for the other players saying that's what they were up to that day. Completely improved it and had it fit the campaign perfectly. Meanwhile I'm wasting all my hard work on this faggot..
So mad dude..
>>45056133
sweet christ you are a beta, man up
>>45058010
Horror is not something you build with rules, it takes effort on the GM part, not the system.
>>45057826
Dragonborn firebreath is pretty weak overall.
And any character can be big and/or scaly.
>>45056049
>>45057033
>>45058443
>So the person who had received the plot hook about this and was meant to go tell the party just... decided not to. He said it would be less dangerous with one person and went in alone
Holy fuck that so selfish and assholish. I'd have had him get overwhelmed by guards/monsters and killed because one guy wasn't enough to fight them off. If he ragequit, so much the better, and at least I'd have burned him from trying the same shit again in another group.
>>45058559
>any character can be big and/or scaly.
"You enter the tavern and are hit by a wave of music. A big scaly elf bard is jigging around playing a fiddle."
"You stride into the dwarven king's throne hall. Aged greybeards line either side of the throne, upon which sits a big scaly dwarven king."
"You manage to evade the goblin wolf-riders and escape to the safety of the halfling village. Big scaly halflings come bustling out of their holes to greet the newcomers."
>>45058608
But he's 100% right. 1 person sneaking in is hard enough as is; a group of 4 isn't going to get very far.
>>45056049
>Times that players ruined your dreams
>>45058740
None of this seems particularly out of place.
>>45056133
Maybe just let him start at level 20 with a balor mount, too. Wouldn't want to be a dick, after all.
>>45056734
>try to club her to death with his erection.
sorry anon but that's hilarious
>>45056734
>Not having the fey shrink either his prick or all of him in retribution
Think like a fairie, anon.
>>45058608
He ended up ruining the whole campaign so we had to stop playing, so yes I do wish I had done that. That would have been smart, but hindsight etc. There are a lot of things I wish I'd done differently.
It was weird because I was actually 'beta testing' the campaign with my sister and her friends. I wanted to try out dming and they wanted to try trpgs, so I ran the campaign I was planning. I got to see everything twice. And the other group, the girls, they did the whole session as I expected. They split up the rooms and I think they explored most of them before they got nervous and bailed. They learned a lot and got some cool loot. They found the wizard's toad familiar and tried to get the ranger to speak to it but he couldn't, then the sorcerer showed up and rolled knowledge arcane and decided that if anything happened to the toad, the wizard would know and instantly show up and kill them. So they left quietly and pretended to be maids in front of a toad.
Anyway the moral of the story is fuck That Guy.
>>45059330
They had a few hours and a lot of ground to cover, and disguises/cover story. There was no reason to believe he could do it all or do it better. I think he may have said he didn't trust them? I'm not really sure. Either way from a metagame standpoint it's pretty fucking selfish to ruin an entire week of work for the dm and ruin the entire session for the group after it was clear that was what we were doing that day.
>>45058740
>big scaly dwarven king.
Sounds like he was cursed by an enemy of his kingdom and turned into a monster, but being a Dwarf and a King he proceeded not to give a fuck.
>>45060272
Shrink all of him but his erection.
>>45056049
>Make homebrew system
>Testing it with some people.
>Make it abundantly clear that this is a system in alpha, and it probably has some kinks in it, and I'm actually kind of interested in trying to make sure that the mechanics work the way they're supposed to.
>Little dungeon romp, a 2 session adventure.
>That one guy complaining that things aren't balanced and it's not fair that he had a shit build.
Admittedly, not a ruined dream, but I wanted to shake him a bit and shout at him to stop being stupid.
>>45057826
If the player is willing to get scared, they'll be willing to get scared.
>>45056133
Pathetic.
>Let's do a classic heroes journey game where you guys take care of your home town.
>sounds good DM
>creates weabo edgelord kitsune for the small human only village.
end my torment.
>>45056049
There's literally nothing wrong with Dragonborn in Dark Sun though. There are explicitly draconic humanoids in The Dragon's fortress and they could just as easily be a failed experiment of the Sorcerer-Kings or random mutants.
Ravenloft is trickier but a humanoid (in the D&D sense) character or group of characters in a xenophobic setting like Ravenloft could be an interesting RP experience.
>>45062439
Have you considered saying no?
>>45062522
I did. he raged and refused to play anything else, which killed the game as we had a very small player pool to begin with.
>>45062555
Excellent. Now learn to vet your players first, separately, before signing them on and having them rely on each other to keep the player pool large enough.
>>45061210
You could stop trying to be a pretentious twit.
As much shit as every established system gets, I'm sure even DnD 3.X is better than your fecal brew.
>>45056049
Players were strong-armed into working for a dick of a wizard they failed to burgle.
He forces them into some jobs. Eventually one of the jobs is an assasination, and they decide to skip town. (Which is a surprisingly goodwilled sort of thing for players to do. )
So they're semi-on-the-clock and for the next session I had the rogue a stack of letters. from her father. Who was in jail and her long-term plotline involves getting him out. Turns out the jailers were hoping to figure out where his stash was in these letters and kept them for a while.
Well each letter DID INDEED have a clue about where he hit his magical gear which he hoped his daughter would use to free him
Nope. She takes the letters, tells me she doesn't tell any one else, and they skip town...
oh come on!
I don't know how to get my friends excited for a super hero game.
Hell, even if I could, I'd have to run it. The fuck would be the point if I don't get to play as a cape? I try to not to think about it, but I just can't seem to stop.
>>45058740
>big scaly halflings
That...sort of feels appropriate, but I'm not totally certain why.
>>45061210
had a similar issue with my homebrew system
>tell my players i just want to get a feel for combat with the system
>okay cool anon
>one refuses to fight at all
>one keeps trying to fight by doing random things instead of using any attacks already in the system
>have to explain how everything works every time to the two other people, even though you just fucking roll damage
yet as soon as I ported the races and classes to 5e, my players did everything in their power to break it.
>>45064166
>players aren't excited to be heroes
>you don't want to play the villains
why not make them the villains?
>>45062941
>creating new systems is pretentious
>everyone has to love 3.5 or else you're a hipster
>>45064411
If he refuses to fight, don't be a control freak. A GM who doesn't let players experiment isn't fun.
![tumblr_lm5hqd7KPy1qk6wp4o1_500[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/J4YVDNY.jpg "tumblr_lm5hqd7KPy1qk6wp4o1_500[1].jpg")
>Dragonborn
>>45064166
I know that feeling. I bought the book for Marvel Heroic the day after it came out almost four years ago, and I haven't been able to play it yet.
>>45064419
We have issues with metagame thinking in our standard fantasy games. I don't think I could trust them, or even myself, to not "cheat" if we're going up against each other.
I think I'm ready to leave. It's been a fun two years, but my heart's not into it anymore.
>>45064419
DMPCing.
I'm on reverse side of him - afraid to run a cape game because I have so many ideas for villains that I want to play so I'm afraid I will turn them into invulnerable inserts.
>>45059778
>... big scaly elf bard...
>... big scaly dwarven king...
>... big scaly halflings...
>big
>scaly
>>45065045
Comic-book villains are pretty much invulnerable by default. Unexpected recoveries, dastardly escapes and alternate-universe versions of themselves are par for the course. Really, the superhero genre is probably one of the best ones for long-running or recurring antagonists. It's not GM-bullshit when he comes back from the dead. You're just playing to type.
>>45065185
No, I mean more than that.
The classic villains auto-win stage one; but get beaten later on; even if in the future they'll return.
I fear I'll just abuse those conventions to skip them out of setbacks entirely.
A dragonborn in Ravenloft is perfectly fine. The Mist drags in all kinds of creatures from all over the Planes, there's basically no logical limit. I've seen someone play a freaking githyanki in Ravenloft and it turned out fine.
Dragonborn exist in Athas as the dray.
>>45065766
>a malformed three-legged pug is the same thing as a Doberman
I haven't looked at DS 4E; should I assume that they did away with the pathetic inbred PC dray and made them all beautiful symmetrical dragonborn?
>>45062941
Virt get out.
>>45061039
Shrink the erection too, but make him a lot smaller, small enough he can't even lift his dickLeave the erection just big enough for the pixie to use as a dildo
>Be a couple years ago
>Play starwars game
>Best game we ever had everyone loved it
>A while later I ask the group about doing another starwars game
>2 outta 3 think it's a great idea
>third guy outright refuses
>"Why?"
>"The last game was so good we can't top it."
>mfw he says this every fucking time I broach a starwars game
>mfw he refuses to play anything but 4e dnd now for some reason
>mfw he is the most stubborn mother fucker but he has been in my dnd group since we started it years ago and excluding him from a game would lead to an awkward 2 player 1 dm game
>mfw he's done this kinda shit for years but is too good a friend otherwise for me to call him out and get into a fight over it
>mfw I just want to fucking dm a starwars game holy shit you mother fucker why cant I have nice things godammit
>>45068161
This, every goddamn time
>>45065752
>a freaking githyanki in Ravenloft
Gith: "Well you see, my yellow skin is the result of a humor imbalance."
Villager: "What aboot yer po'nted ears, pushed-in nose, and red devil-eyes?"
Gith: "Also humors."
>>45068161
>mfw he's done this kinda shit for years but is too good a friend otherwise for me to call him out and get into a fight over it
Oh my god you insufferable pissant try maybe tlaking about it without getting into a fight. What kind of shitstain are you? Are you this weak? You cannot even VOICE A GODDAMN OPINION because you're afraid of offending someone?
>>45056089
Ravenloft isn't even fitting for half-orcs; how are dragon men gonna get around in there?
>>45057826
Who's getting scared playing ttrpgs? Thats a shitty medium for horror. You'd need a pro DJ to have any atmosphere at all, unless you decorate your house.
>>45068415
I have talked to him about it you fucking faggot
He gets bitchy and turns into a little baby and all but covers his ears and goes "lalala cant hear you"
And the few times when h does listen and promise to change, he goes right back to being a little fucker the next day
I shoulda made that clear but I didnt think someone would give me such a faggy response about it
>>45058443
>>45058608
This guy is right, you should have just killed him. Always kill anyone who intentionally splits the party by themself. Eventually, they'll learn.
>>45059330
Obviously you're not much of a gamer. The whole party is always better at something than the individuals in it.
>>45060410
No, from a metagame standpoint, you were retarded to let him play his own personal private game and ignore your other three players. He was doing fine, he's just playing the game. He didn't know you spent a week on it. YOUR job is to handle it.
>>45062439
Kitsune are often the guardian spirits of villages, don't be a wierdo.
>>45062941
Your opinions are bad and you should feel bad. Just because you're a piece of shit who couldn't get the cock out of his mouth long enough to create something, you assume that everyone else is the same. But we aren't. Lots of people are good at things. You're just retarded.
>>45068458
>you speak to him about things, mostly tolerating his bullshit
>when he hears something he doesn't like, he ignores you like a child
>says he'll change, but doesn't
>good friends
Whatever you say, bruh.
>>45058530
Mostly true, but D&D's rule are suited primarily for combat heavy heroic power fantasy. I'm not saying a good GM couldn't make it work but you can't say that D&D and CoC are equally suited to handle horror flavored games
>>45064411
Those both sound like great opportunities to expand your system's usability
>>45056049
Why would you not decide the setting that-
>Frogposter
Oh, nevermind, opinion discarded.
>>45068437
You're doing Ravenloft wrong. Ravenloft abducts people from the planes, its native population is the mostly human part.
Here, read this and you'll see how to play horror games properly.
http://www.deathstarinc.com/D&D/Heroes%20Of%20Horror.pdf
Ignore the 3e rules and focus on the narrative guides.
>>45064430
Normally I'd agree with you, but the context of the game itself is different from the usual.
"I want to test out the combat in this system I've been working on"
"okay, cool"
combat starts
"I back up and avoid the fight"
"I am doing anything that's not fighting"
It's the same story that's old as gaming. DM pitches game premise, players agree to game premise, game is ran along a premise, players do their best to have nothing to do with that premise, and complain.
It's not much different from the games where race x and class y is banned, so a player wants to play race x who is a class y.
So regarding OP, have you decided what to do? I have a suggestion I stole from another thread.
>>45056049
How is that in any way or form relevant to your choice of setting? What the players do on their own time is their problem, not yours.
>>45068743
But the base system hasn't been established as working yet, 'tardo.
>>45056457
You mean apart from completely failing to fit in thematically and making sure the party is going to get chased by a mob in every village?
>>45064396
Scaly halflings are basically kobolds
>>45057826
Pfft. If you can't set an atmosphere that scares a player, that's on you. Shit, one of my players is a dragonborn fighter, and I have personally scared the shit out of him with nothing but magpies and children. Don't be such a shit DM.
>>45068762
It's a shame that guide there doesn't have much that deals specifically with gothic horror, which is where a lot of people really go wrong in Ravenloft.
>>45068458
>>45068597
He was a good friend.
>>45069299
Then I guess you're lucky you had those two other players playing normally, tardo.
>>45069700
>Sign up to do something
>Refuse to do the thing you agreed to
Yeah. Nah. Cunt.
>>45063927
>Nope. She takes the letters, tells me she doesn't tell any one else, and they skip town...
Thats just plain stupid
>>45056049
>too spineless to tell players no
>too rigid to adapt to their choices
What made you think you could DM?
>>45056049
Saying no is not difficult.
>>45056049
Basically any time I've attempted to craft a thought-out situation for them to resolve.
Alright, so I tried running a scary horror game in a custom Eberron variant setting. It had a few good moments, but mostly failed. This is probably one of the lamest sessions I've ever run.
>PCs are staying the night in town between adventures, they just got done accidentally setting off the zombie apocalypse mcguffin but don't know it yet.
>There's a huge nasty snow storm on.
>Snow storm is powered by negative energy and it's going to get super bad, forcing the PCs to huddle into one spot in the inn, and maybe throw up magical protections against the cold.
>lolyeahright
>PC's are certain that something is afoot, there's some evil monster causing this for sure!
>"Nope just a terrible storm guys."
>They don't believe me, I've been fucking with them with illusions and mind control every other session.
>"I want to climb to the top of the inn!"
>It's like -30 and you don't have endure elements.
>"I'm doing it"
>Makes it to the top of the inn, uses some bullshit to protect the inn from cold and I allow it to speed things along.
>Nearly dies from cold damage.
>Another dumbass PC is stumbling in circles around the inn for round after round despite constant reports of fucking nothing happening.
>Guys, really, it's just a big storm, you don't see anything.
>"WE HAVE TO STOP THE MONSTER RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS!"
>They search the inn for clues, they search around the inn for clues, they inspect fucking everything with detect magic. They inspect everything with detect evil. They check for illusions.
>Guys it's just a fucking storm with some magical component there is nothing around here.
>Naturally they don't believe me, they argue over how to figure out where the mastermind behind this devilish snow storm is and how to stop it.
>Eventually they gave up and waited the storm out.
>mfw it was just a quick setup for ice zombies being out around the town the next day and it took 4 hours to get through.
>>45068114
No, no, leave the erection big enough to be her couch and use his body as dildo.
He ain't getting off.
>>45058740
>what are curses?
>>45072894
Defeats the purpose of making his dick smaller than the fairy he was mocking, plus he could probably still get off to that
>>45072826
This is where a good DM would follow through with his players' ideas.
>>45072826
>>45073297
Yeah, he said it was a horror game, yet left out the horror element when it was expected to be present.
If it was just a set up for ice-zombies to appear, it sounds more like a standard hack-slash-adventure game.
>>45068449
Just dim your lights a bit, replace chips with marshmallows for silence and you're good to go if you don't suck at storytelling
Again the point of horror is not jump scares but dread, anguish, uneasiness... all feelings you can create easily.
>>45056457
>every villager will flee or attack on sight
>every bigbad will want it for experiments
>in no way fits into the feel of the setting
>fire breathing as an ability isn't worked into the mechanics
>literally a unique creature for ravenloft
> DM doesn't want it
Gee...no reason at all faggot
>>45058010
>>45068449
>muh system
You fuckwit, you can't just expect a pile of rules to produce tension and dread in your ttrpg. You and your group(s) must be autistic if you think you can't do horror in ttrpg form.
>>45072826
>It's like -30 and you don't have endure elements
>Nearly dies from cold damage.
Where do you live that -30 kills you? Did he spend hours out there? Did he not wear any clothes? Was the wind gale force? Because even with moderate winds you could survive for half an hour with only some frostbite on extremities.
>>45073297
But this guy is right, should've had a monster cause the storm to hide the incoming zombies.
>>45069331
>thematically
Please, Ravenloft is clusterfuck of thematics already. It's got plants straight out of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, renaissance-tier countries next to early medieval shitholes, and a realm full of nothing but fairies ruled by a Cthulu-fairy.
>>45075006
>every
Wrong, my friend. Villagers could just as easily regard a Dragonborn as a (good) omen. Most villains don't even do experiments, much less ones that would require Dragonborn.
>feel
See my other response. This is a setting with a Pinocchio rip-off who's a serial murderer and he's a fucking Darklord.
>no rules
Except that's wrong. OP is obviously playing either 3.5 or 4e so there are rules for that.
>unique creature
And why is this bad? A unique creature could be an interesting RP situation. And Dragonborn could easily be homebrewed into Ravenloft, either in a canon domain (Darkon, land of wizards of shit) or a homebrew one.
>the DM doesn't want it
Well he has shit taste.
>>45077445
That was a lot of words, to say nothing.
>>45069474
For you.
>>45076122
"Extreme cold (below –20° F) deals 1d6 points of lethal damage per minute (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage."
That would be the weather rules we were using, from the pfsrd (we mix 3.5 and pathfinder a lot). it was like 3 years back but if I remember correctly I bumped up the damage dice for severe cold weather, and it might have been even colder than -30f.
As for including monsters, yeah in hindsight probably, but essentially the encounter always seemed about 5 minutes from the PCs buckling down for the night and investigating in the morning, and a monster would have been really out of place in their location. Like I said, probably still my lamest session in 3 years, but in my defense it was also my 4th session ever. I didn't even have much experience as a player at the time.
The game started off more as an apparently normal adverturing setting with a lot of unsettling minor events slowly building unease with a lot of investigating ancient ruins, reading dusty tomes, and dealing with the wilderness. Eventually it became a crazy action adventure ending in a gigantic 3 way battle as a natural consequence of the way the players choose to play the latter half of the game.
>>45069331
So put a few points in disguise, make him wear a cloak, set up a "Weredragon slayer" scam in the center of town after letting him be spotted on the outskirts a few times.
We'll run off into the distance, come back with a severed tail, collect our fee and get shitfaced, it'll be great.
>>45077833
>"Extreme cold (below –20° F) deals 1d6 points of lethal damage per minute (no save). In addition, a character must make a Fortitude save (DC 15, +1 per previous check) or take 1d4 points of nonlethal damage."
What if you're wearing proper winter clothing? Because, I've been outside for a half an hour in that kind of cold at my job and was fine.
Mostly thanks to Hand warmers, a heavy ass winter coat and my flannel lined work pants.
>>45062519
>>45068437
Basically EVERYTHING fits in Ravenloft. The place kidnaps people from all sorts of settings.
This is a setting with Worfweres. Not werewolves but wolfweres.
>>45078068
..Wolves that turn into people during the full moon?
>>45073027
>what are curses?
"You enter the tavern and are hit by a wave of music. A big scaly cursed elf bard is jigging around playing a fiddle."
"You stride into the dwarven king's throne hall. Aged greybeards line either side of the throne, upon which sits a big scaly cursed dwarven king."
"You manage to evade the goblin wolf-riders and escape to the safety of the halfling village. Big scaly cursed halflings come bustling out of their holes to greet the newcomers."
Yeah, so much better that way champ :^)
>>45077999
Yeah, you're alright with proper clothing, but the player in question didn't have clothing sufficient to whatever temperature it was at the time. The area was usually still snowy, but much warmer.
>>45078106
Yes. This is a major plot point in one of the books.
